Orbitas
by Cutterin
Summary: Life is 90% maintenance, right? The other 10% is just breaking down...
1. Orbitas

" You exist in a stacked deck, you look in a mirror at your young face, the face your sister carries, and you know it's the only leverage you've got." -Cornelius Eady  
  
I, Reagan Sally Keyes, am a fervent optimist.  
  
Well, mostly.  
  
Except that, when I dream, I dream of blood red skies and blacked out sunsets, blotted, imperceptible ceilings on my world that do an impressive job to conceal my mother's madness. There are no stars, and the weighted one I wear around my neck, have worn, since time out of mind, isn't there to choke the living out of me.  
  
When I wake, I wake to find myself moving. It takes moments to adjust to the burden of being conscious and the sunlight streaming through the broad, lidless windows. When my eyes adjust to the new levels of light intensity, I promptly wish I'd never opened my eyes in the first place. This mouth of mine feels of cotton wool, tongue seems to have ballooned in the night and my clothes carry a distinct stench of yesterday.  
  
A glance around the aged and damp riddled RV confirms that the van is moving too, thank God for his smaller miracles, eating the empty dirt road like it's going out of fashion. My mother in the driving seat gnaws on her lower lip, stares from behind bloodshot, hollow eyes and runs a hand through a mass of unruly red locks.  
  
I cough a little into my hand, an icebreaker, if you will, but the hooded eyes don't even flinch, choosing instead to burn holes of intensity into the upcoming horizon. Lying back down on the creaking cot, I put my finger to work tracing the edges of a faded photograph tacked to the van wall, a picture of my mother, father and me, cracked and creased, and impossible to see unless you wanted to. Unless you'd looked at it so many times it was etched into your memory. I stared at it until my eyelids slid shut again, and thought about it even after I had fallen back into my sky-less pessimism.  
  
We stop at a diner in Bakersfield, Arizona, a run down stone slab of a building that could just as easily be a block of public toilets. I sit groggily in our corner booth and contemplate the appearance of my hair, simultaneously casting glances toward my mother. She was sitting on the edge of my cot when I woke for a second time, which, aside from being decidedly creepy and unsettling, signalled the beginning of something better.  
  
It only occurred to me a solid ten minutes later that, if there ever was a right time to ask why we were going in the opposite direction to our plotted destination- that might've been it.  
  
She lightly threads a paper napkin through her fingers, ignoring the untouched cup of coffee beside her left hand and the concerned daughter radiating helplessness from across the scarred tabletop. I shouldn't ask her, it'd make her more intense, right? Oh, to hell with it.  
  
"Where are we going, mom? What happened to Seattle? I mean Idaho's.pretty, but."  
  
Immense green eyes met my own dark pools and I saw for the first time that behind the seeming desperation and solitude, there was a glint of anticipation in my mother's expression. She was excited about something and I refused to allow myself to entertain the notion that it might be that. No. No way. No how.  
  
"Well, sweetheart, there have been some, um, exciting new developments. Lights, Reag, lots of lights, too many to ignore."  
  
I barely contain the eye-roll that threatens, but I do, and clench my jaw in disbelief. I take a few moments to stop the oncoming hiss fit; breathing through my nose and spitting air back out through gritted teeth. Mother dearest, showing the first signs of common sense since the terrible error in judgement that led to being here, attempts to neither mollify me nor further justify her actions.  
  
"You promised dad you wouldn't. Not this time. You lied to him- every minute we sit here you're lying- and what's worse, you've made me a co- conspirator!"  
  
"Sweetie, I didn't intend for this too."  
  
".You never do, mom, you never do."  
  
She studies the floor and chews on that one for a while. After taking an overblown sip of her now twenty-minute-old coffee, she lets out an almost imperceptible sigh and wrings her hands, massaging her naked wedding ring finger with nervous digits.  
  
"You think I should give him a call, don't you?"  
  
I've never met Lisa Clarke the decisive, spunky and independent young woman. I've seen pictures, and aunt Nina assures me that she did indeed exist, but the Lisa I've known, Lisa Keyes, is a complete and utter wreck of indecisiveness. Unless, of course, the matter is lights or sightings or abductions, then she's all action.  
  
"Uh- yeah." She nods, takes another impossibly large to swallow gulp of caffeine, and then wearily makes her way across to the line of greasy payphones. I block her voice out, try to concentrate on the lull inside the boiling hot restaurant, but words reach me in the gaps of surrounding conversation. A quick look reveals a small, hunch-shouldered, redhead clinging to a phone receiver like a life raft.  
  
I begin to ponder the possibility of another murky mug of tea when I hear my name being called and slide out of the rough vinyl seat to join her. She doesn't say anything, just hands the handset to me. Her eyes are glistened over, but I'm not too concerned, my parents have always held too much passion and emotion for their own good.  
  
"Hey?"  
  
"Hey, Reagan, what- what happened?"  
  
My father sounded a little hazed. I could imagine him now; worry clouding his eyes and his brow creased in an effort to evaluate the situation. Dammit, mom, I love you but you never think of other people, not when you've caught the scent of.of other things.  
  
"I have no idea. One minute we're on our way through Oregon, the next thing I know, we've down a three hundred mile u-turn into Idaho. I'm sorry dad."  
  
"No sweetie, no. It's ok. Just.just put your mother on again, please. Take care, ok. I love you, sweetie, I'll see you soon."  
  
The tide of emotions endangered my blank face, so I waited outside until the phone call finished.  
  
My mother came out after five minutes and, though almost impossible, looked more shattered than before. She looked at me and I could tell she wanted to apologise, but couldn't see the reasoning for why, so I kissed her on the forehead and hugged her tight.  
  
I've always done that, since I was little, and I have no idea why it affects them so much, but when I do, my mother and father never fail to sob uncontrollably. 


	2. Perfringo

Authors Note: Before I ramble back into the weary swing of things (yes I know it's slow but it'll get faster soon, o.k?) a big shout out to my main people SpookyMulder and TrickHayden, you guys rock, and keep winging those reviews in, please- I'm stumbling a bit blind here, so a seeing eye would go down a treat right now.  
  
"Yet you'll fail for wishing untwitching limbs with no fire in them, For convincing yourself you stand a chance of navigating the stolid night, Perhaps then you would not be slouching, crawling toward Bethlehem, Without a prayer for a pillow and without a single, silhouetted inn in sight"  
  
Slouching Toward Bethlehem Missy MacAdem  
  
By the next morning, still holed down in the confines of Bakersfield, my mother's delusional state had dissolved as quickly and obscurely as it had come into being. I evaluated this new mood while I fetched the morning paper and a couple of groceries from an overly air-conditioned store on the main drag. The most disturbing thing, I concluded, was not that she was having mood swings that were mood orbits, but that I was getting to be accustomed to this sort of thing.  
  
Let me tell you a bit about Lisa Keyes, if you will. She's not your average mother, not by a lengthy shot. She's got this itch for the open road; my dad couldn't scratch it, and neither could I, which is why we only see her for two weeks at any given time. She tried, god knows she did, but eventually we all faced up to the fact that she would never be able to stay in one place, not while she was still, as dad put it; "searching for something you or me can't see. Something she can feel." So she glides all over, and in summer, I go with, but for the most, it's just me and my dad- my dad and me. It's really kind of sad when you get right into it- but surprisingly for the best.  
  
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to be in a regular family set-up, but when the maternal unit insists on telling night time stories that feature aliens and UFOs, things I don't even believe in, you just know regular is the farthest thing from what you've really got. So we give her her "lights" and her "abductees", and she gives us herself for as long as she can.  
  
The smell of eggs pervaded the van when I returned and I somehow managed to quit thinking about our predicament long enough to put away four eggs and half a loaf of bread. Mom looked quite put off by my display of stomach capacity, so left. When I found her, one intestinal adventure later, she was once again at that greasy row of payphones, clutching her head and I rolled my eyes inwardly at the drastic change in disposition that was undoubtedly to follow. I was about to walk right out the way I came in when I noticed a new addition to the diner, there was now a guy behind the counter who I would distinctly remember seeing before, family crisis or no. Thinking about it seriously, I was in need a hot cup o' java.  
  
My caffeine arrived carried by a forty-year-old, hairnet-toting woman, whom I'll swear snarled at me before spilling half the damn cup. A couple of minutes and a few swift counter glimpses after, mom strolled over to the corner booth I was occupying and smiled warmly at me across the cracked green Formica. I practically spat out the wad of gum I was busily sculpting with my molars but didn't, thankfully, saving face in front of the cute counter boy.  
  
"You seem- better. Dad?"  
  
"Yeah. I've got some good news, too. You're dad's coming up to join us."  
  
Now I do lose my gum, it flies across the tabletop and my mom stares at it for a few seconds before deciding it's not toxic or dangerous and then looks back up at me. Its strange how moments of clarity hit you at the oddest times, like right there, in a smelly, cute counter boy inhabited, but otherwise crappy diner. I gazed at my mother and realised, though she wasn't usually old in appearance, quite good for a woman of forty odd, she suddenly had the air of someone seven years younger. Her eyes were shockingly blue and they sparkled with an intensity that made my own fall away in confusion.  
  
"He's coming with us. We're going to Texas, sweetie, to see your grandfather's house. You've never seen it before, have you? It's beautiful down there."  
  
The minute the word Texas comes up I tilt my head and fix her my most suspicious eyebrow posture. Maybe it'll prompt her to tell me just what in the Hell is going on. Instead, she finds her shoes alarmingly interesting and babbles on.  
  
"We can.uh.catch up on things-family things, you know? And your aunt Nina may swing by."  
  
"What the HELL mom? You and dad have been separated, for THREE years now! We do not go to Texas on family outings, aunt Nina does not just swing by and I am not a child, mom, not anymore- so just, just tell me, ok! What is going on?"  
  
I didn't mean to explode so messily, but the debris seems to have blown as far as cute counter boy, who, having not noticed me at all thus far, has just looked up in a "what a freak" gesture that ruins our correspondence before it begins. My mother is suitably shocked too, though more in a motherly annoyed sort of way than an entranced zombie way, further proof that she has kicked out of the slump. What can I say, at sixteen, I take my victories where I can get 'em.  
  
"Reagan! Keep your voice down, please. Listen- I can't- It's better if you hear this from the both of us, ok? We'll sort this out, sweetie. Your dad'll be here tomorrow and we'll sort this all out."  
  
The last few lines she says to herself because I've already stormed out of the diner and off on a random burst of teenage hormonal self pity, which is, this time, if only in my opinion, altogether justified. 


	3. Arcanum

Disclaimer: It has only just hit me now that I don't own any of them- damn you Bohem! I don't want to talk about it.  
  
"Daughters, in the slant light on the porch, Are bickering. The eldest has come home With new truths she can hardly wait to teach." -Marilyn Nelson  
  
Its probably better for all concerned if you don't ask what I did on my teenage rampage, but I managed to fill in the time quite nicely. When I finally sauntered my way back to the parked camper van, silently wondering why no one had yet complained about the damn thing taking up half the diner's parking lot, the moon was parading high above the quiet rooftops and the diner's large, dust swathed windows were just dark holes in the surrounding cement.  
  
I took a moment to glare at the world's ceiling, sending heated, hate- filled rays of thought to the stars and beyond. I tried to change it- make it like it was in my dreams, to wilfully erase the whole, immaterial, home- wrecking thing. I wasn't able to, though, never have been. The stars smirked at me and twinkled in a triumphant display of infallibility. I narrowed my eyes, refusing to admit defeat and yanked hard on the van door to vent the anger a little.  
  
My mother, evidently so overcome with the worry of possible dangers that her only daughter might be facing in the innumerable alleys and side streets of central Idaho, was snoring peacefully on her weighed-down, feebly held bunk. I sat tentatively on my own cot, opposite my sleeping mom's, and took in her blank, untroubled face. I contemplated, not for the first time, what she was doing, what she was following and, above all else, why she saw fit to drag me along on her one way trip to insanity.  
  
I sighed, pulled off my shoes and stretched out on the cot. I stared into that sleeping face until I couldn't focus on it any longer, then turned onto my other side, closing the curtains without looking out the windowpane, where I sweated in and out of feverish half-dreams until morning.  
  
My night of alternate hissy-fits and hectic, restless sleeping meant that when I finally woke up, still dazed and bleary, it was on the upper side of noon, which disorientated me entirely. That, and the fact that my father's green eyes were scanning me from across the van floor.  
  
He barely had time to blurt out a good morning before I lounged at him in a flying hug and wrapped my arms around him. I'm no daddy's girl, o.k? I just hadn't seen him in ages! Mom smiled at me from over his shoulder and offered me a cup of coffee. I took the steaming, chipped mug and sat next to my dad, thinking of a hundred things to say at once, and a million reasons why it was great to see him again.  
  
So maybe I'm a little bit of a daddy's girl.  
  
After finding out the most recent developments on the home gossip mill, and the latest adventures of our pet dog, Mary, my dad turned serious for the first time since he arrived.  
  
"Reagan, honey, your mother and I have been talking and we have something we need to tell you."  
  
He moved himself over to my cot and sat beside my mom, who took his hand in her own and entwined their fingers. The display of affection was not lost on me, but I was too anxiously awaiting the next snippets of conversation to give the gesture the normal mental cross-examination. A thousand equally hideous ideas give chase to each other in my head- dad is gay, mom is gay, I'm inheriting a genetic disease or, my personal favourite and bookmaker's choice, I'm adopted. My shoulders tense and I begin to feel a little nauseous trying to decide which parent to look in the eye- if they are even my parents at all. My "mom" spoke first.  
  
"We, um, we have wondered, when, if ever, to tell you. we decided, when you were born, because you were normal, healthy, we decided to wait, until you were old enough to understand, or, until we had to."  
  
I would commend her on her frank and direct approach, if she wasn't dancing in circles round the subject matter and making a whole load of non-sense.  
  
"Mom- what the hell?"  
  
She glances at my dad for some support or something, and he takes the reins.  
  
"Sweetheart, I realise you've been an only child your whole life, but the truth is.you have never been an only child."  
  
He smiles and lets out a breath that sounds as though it's been held in for a decade and grips my mom's hand tighter. They both peer at me like I'm in a test-tube, expectant and hopeful.  
  
" That makes - no sense dad, what, what are you saying? You guys had another kid? I'm adopted, aren't I?"  
  
There's another excessively long breath, my mom this time, inhaling.  
  
"No-no! We had another child, before you were born- a girl-your sister.Allie"  
  
Her face adopts a look of complete bliss and my dad raises his hand to caress her cheek. If I weren't caught up in the middle of my own identity catastrophe- I would be very unsettled by their emotional demonstrations. Oh, and a sister? I'm going to share my parents and their separation- fuelled guilt? Like hell. Wait, maybe.  
  
"Is she. did she. die?"  
  
My mother looks shocked and confused, but understanding at the same time.  
  
"No, but, she, ah, she had to go away."  
  
" You gave her up for adoption?"  
  
My dad coughs awkwardly and they share another of those knowing glances and if this doesn't unravel itself soon I'm giving myself up for adoption. Then my mother begins to speak, in a rush, and I'm not sure if I hear her properly at all, because what I did hear couldn't possibly be what she really said.  
  
"Allie. Allie was born about ten years before you were. She was a beautiful girl, beautiful and special. She could do things. It came from her grandfather- your grandfather. She was special like him, it skipped a generation with me."  
  
"Hold on, mom. Pronounciate, ok? And ten years before me? What? You and dad met like a year before I was born, Aunt Nina told me- you've told me yourself."  
  
Another knowing glance, then my parents both look at me with this slice of thick pity in the corner of their eyes, like I'm about to learn something that'll make me less of a person.  
  
"We did meet a year before you were born. You know your mother's search, her work as a UFOligist, she has a reason for why she believes in those things, when other people mock them, other people laugh."  
  
My dad pauses and takes in my unhinged jaw before deciding that, having flown the damn plane overhead, he might as well let the bombs away.  
  
"When she was young, your mother was abducted. I was too. Allie- was conceived aboard an alien craft."  
  
He finishes and looks at me in entire serenity, in all seriousness. I gulp down as much of the ridiculousness as I can buy and run a dry tongue over drier lips. I pause, take a steadying breath then burst into the loudest laugh I'm sure I've ever given. My dad looks hurt and reaches out a hand to put on my knee.  
  
"Sweetie, look, I know it's a lot to take in.  
  
I stop laughing immediately and when I meet my parent's eyes they seem a little bit afraid of me, of what I'll do next.  
  
"A lot to take in! Reckon? I thought it was just your average PARENTAL exchange!"  
  
"Honey, we know, it's o.k."  
  
"O.K? What specific part of this is o.k? This is- this is like something outta Uncle Tom's books, this is crazy dad! O.k! O.K! Lets say, for the sake of argument, aliens exist, they abducted you. What the hell does that have to do with this adopted sister? That is, assuming I believe in this sister, after the second revelation."  
  
My parents adopted an air of innocence, as though I was being utterly unreasonable and acting irrationally for such a situation. What-ever.  
  
"Sweetie, we're telling you the truth. My grandfather was an alien. He landed here in the fifties, in the Roswell crash. He and my grandmother had a child that was a hybrid, my father, allie's-and your, grandfather. I'm part alien, she was part alien, and you are too."  
  
I jumped up somewhere in the middle of this, and, without realising it began to pace the RV's floorboards while fidgeting wildly with my hands. My mother and father just stared on dumbly.  
  
"Well fabulous. FABULOUS! I always knew you were whacked mom, but dad, I never expected this from you, came WAY out of left field!"  
  
"Sweetie, you're shouting."  
  
"YOU ARE GODDAMN RIGHT I'M SHOUTING. And I have a RIGHT to be! Jesus CHRIST."  
  
I knelt on the floor next to the tiny oven, swatting my mother's arm away when she tried to console me. I tried to think logically, to piece together these things so that they couldn't possibly be true. The most appalling thing of all was that, in some way, it made a sickening sort of sense in my head. It answered a good deal of the questions I'd been asking all my life, it filled me with a bad tasting desire to know more. I fingered the lone star around my neck and turned soberly to my mother and father.  
  
"You never answered me. You never told me what this had to do with the sister. You've done the grunt work, you may as well finish me off."  
  
I was suddenly very tired and had to fight the urge to fall asleep with my head propped back against the kitchen fridge. I half gave in to myself, and my skull let out a small thud as it collided with the wooden panelling. At least, from this vantage point, I could not meet their gaze.  
  
"Honey, Allie, she was special, like I said, there were parts of her that were them, parts that could do.. extraordinary things. She was wanted, because she was special. The government, they knew about Charlie and me, they tried to take us, to find out what it was the aliens were using us for. They couldn't- your father ran, and the aliens protected me. The year before you were born, we met. We remembered. Allie began to demonstrate the powers she had, the things that made her special. They took her, and we got her back, but they came again. We had nowhere to hide, so we did they only thing we could. We let them, the aliens, take her, to protect her."  
  
My mother's voice broke in the middle and when I looked, she wiped at the edges of her lids. I bobbed my head in an effort to understand. When I spoke, it was slow and deliberate, the speech of a drunken man.  
  
"Let me see if I have this, I have an older sister, who is, currently, drifting around somewhere in the cosmos?"  
  
A lot of eager head nodding told me that I did hear correctly.  
  
"So why, why aren't I special, why can't I do things?"  
  
They had no answer to that, other than a sympathetic gaze.  
  
"This is why I have a mother who chases lights for a living. You're trying to find her again. You think there are aliens out there who have your daughter. I don't believe that. I can't. This trip to Texas, this is just a front to scare me the hell out, right? You're gonna take me down there with tales of aliens and stuff and then there'll be a party or something. I'll be sixteen in two weeks. That's gotta be it."  
  
I let out a small, faker than silicon laugh and raised my head expectantly.  
  
"No sweetie, no. We're not joking or lying or messing with your head. The lights your mom's been looking at, they're leading up to something. We're going to Texas because that's where they took her from us. We're going to Texas because that's where we think she's coming back to."  
  
I just stare with my eyebrows raised, because it's all I have the energy to do. After a moment, I don't even have the energy to do that. I let my head drop backwards again and feel my breathing begin to get short and quick. The tears that had been looming since the conversation began spill over my cheeks in torrents. Before I know what's happening, I pass out, during what I'm told later was a panic attack. The last thing I remember thinking was that I was in the middle of nowhere, without a social services office in sight and- god, I wished I had been adopted. 


	4. Ridentum dicere verum quid vedat?

Disclaimer- Yup, still not mine.  
  
Authors Note- I have been pretty busy lately, what with exams in May, but I really do appreciate all the reviews. Keep up the suggestions too; the think tank is burning on low oil at the minute.  
  
"Farther along we'll know all about it, farther along we'll understand why, cheer up my brother, live in the sunshine, we'll understand it all, by and by." -Emy Lou Harris, Farther Along  
  
We meet up with aunt Nina and uncle Denny in a busy little town just south of Salt Lake City, and they present themselves a lot fresher than my ragged little family. The sight of them greets me like a lighthouse in a storm, a shining beacon of reason and beautiful, beautiful sanity. Uncle Denny works in Denver and aunt Nina moved there with him about ten years ago, just after they got hitched. Uncle Denny is a great guy, but I can't help despise him a little for taking my godmother half the country away from me- I mean, she still visits every couple of months, but it would be nice to have a female confidant as a permanent fixture.  
  
We have dinner in an outdoor café, a nice, French-feeling place that doesn't quite fit the dishevelled and unwashed images of my mother and me. The meal is nice; we catch up on current events, crack jokes and generally avoid the madness that is our being here- which is more than fine by me. It almost feels like my life is once again labouring under its ramshackle definition of normal, but I know it could all turn on its head before I realise what's happening.  
  
My chair scrapes across the asphalt and screeches under my worried weight. The adults all cease speaking at once and turn to look at me.  
  
"I'm going for a walk. Aunt Nina, you wanna come?"  
  
My parents exchange another one of their now patented worried glances. I narrow my eyes at them and dare them to object, but they say nothing, choosing to return to the interrupted conversation as aunt Nina and I stroll off.  
  
We are out of eye and earshot of the café pretty soon, I think it best to put in more distance before speaking, but aunt Nina, never one to be upstaged, breaks the silence first.  
  
"What's eating at you kiddo?"  
  
I glance upwards, at the sunny Utah sky and let out an inaudible ghost of a sigh.  
  
"It's mom and dad. I think.God.I think they might be unwell."  
  
I watch her face intently for any sign that might indicate that she, too, has seen evidence of some sort of irrational behaviour. Her face creases in confusion momentarily, then falls back into it's normal posture, but, and I hope like hell I'm wrong about this, there is a gleam of understanding in her eyes.  
  
"How- how do you mean unwell, exactly? They're ill?"  
  
"No- no, they- dammit- they said some things to me, crazy things, aunt Nina, things that not crazy people do not say. They, they seem convinced I have a sister." Aunt Nina swivels round to face me and I can see the understanding for sure. Coupled with the ferocious waves of pity she gives off, it hits me with the force of a gut punch and I half-sit, half-collapse into a row of shrubbery that borders the sidewalk.  
  
"Reagie, sweetie, I know this is-a lot to take. But I knew Allie- I was her godmom too. I was there, I saw everything, they're not unwell, they're not insane, they're just trying to let you see the truth."  
  
"The TRUTH! Seriously, aunt Nina, you too?"  
  
I scoff and regret it when I see the hurt on her face. She may be just as unstable as my parents. When did I let my guard down for long enough for all the responsible adults in my life to become basket cases?  
  
"Uncle Denny, too?"  
  
She nods and opens her mouth to explain but I rapidly move to cut her off.  
  
"Why now, then? Huh? Why now? They could have told me this story long ago, long before any of these "lights" started showing up, long before I was raised in a dysfunctional and now clinically UNFIT home! If this is the truth, why has it taken so long to be told? If it's the truth, why is it so hard to believe?"  
  
Nina sighs and hunkers down beside me in the shrubbery. She begins to reach an arm around my shoulder, but my back tenses and she hastily withdraws it.  
  
"Your mom and dad, they debated it, they talked about what to do for damn near two years."  
  
She smiles at the memory and then remembers the seriousness of the matter.  
  
"They decided, eventually, that it was best for you not to know. Your mother believed that Allie would come back, but your dad was less sure- that's basically the gist of their separation, actually. But, nasty conflicting opinions or no, they both agreed that you should have the life Allie deserved to have, that you should have the opportunity to be a normal little girl."  
  
Aunt Nina clambers up to her feet and holds out a steady hand to me.  
  
"You're bound to have questions, but I'm not sure I'm the tattoo artist to answer them. You may not believe what we're telling you, and that's ok, you wouldn't be my goddaughter if you mindlessly deemed people, even your parents, to be right. It'll be hard for you, these next few days, but don't ever forget that we love you, sweetie, Den and me and your mom and dad- we love you. We just get caught up in other things sometimes."  
  
I digest this, take her proffered hand, stand myself as straight as my hunched frame will allow and, either due to the days of travel and worry I've undergone, or the crushing weight of my own fallen beliefs upon my shoulders, promptly burst into a loud and messy bundle of sobs. Occasionally, over the wracking breaths and hitching of oxygen, I'm sure aunt Nina can hear me complain bitterly and desperately about wanting a normal family and needing someone to be an adult, or simply not twelve buns short of a dozen.  
  
Aunt Nina, bless her crazy little soul, simply holds onto me amid the startled passing natives.  
  
I must have been crying for a good while, because when we come back to the café, my parents and Den have run out of conversation and are simply drinking the array of alcohol on the crammed table dry. They meet the sight of my puffy eyes and desperate gaze with concern, which I brush aside and sit down; letting my eyes peruse the tarmac ground with immense concentration. Aunt Nina takes her seat too and immediately grabs and chugs an open Budweiser. I begin to think it may be a long night.  
  
God knows how long we sit, long after nightfall anyway, each gazing off into the surrounding emptiness of air and sky. The night manager eventually turfs us out and I walk with four stumbling adults to a nearby motel, check the drunkards and myself in and then sit on the bed watching my parents sleep. They are sprawled on a double bed, my mom's head placed suspiciously on my dad's chest and I trouble myself for a while on what the consequences are when divorced people forget they are divorced. I laugh a little to myself, because it occurs to me that I have spent most of the week watching other people sleep and doing very little in the way of rapid eye movement myself.  
  
I turn out the lights and realise I will not be able to sleep.  
  
I whisper to myself that it's normal, considering the circumstances- strange town, strange bed, crazy parents and relatives. But the niggling, nagging voice buried deep in my skull makes more sense than my own hushed tones. I can't sleep because of the monstrous void where my faith in my family and myself once was; I have no idea who the adults that raised me are. I can't sleep, because I dread the thought that my dreams might be filled with skies that aren't empty, rather bursting with clouds and stars and flashing lights, swarming with a thousand doubts and uncertainties and countless more fears. 


	5. Because there is no Latin for UhOh

Disclaimer: Not mine, leave off.  
  
Author's Note: O.k, even I can't believe how slowly this thing is plodding along, fingers crossed, it should start to pick up in the coming chapters. As always, thanks for the reviews and keep 'em sidling in.  
  
"Do you eat, sleep, do you breathe me anymore? Do you sleep?" -Lisa Loeb -Do you sleep?  
  
I had the optimism to think that maybe when we reached Texas and nothing happened, things would go back to normal and I would go back to Seattle and a Washington summer and friends- life in general. It turned out I made appalling miscalculations on the scale of how bad things could get.  
  
We finally trundle into El Paso about a week after The Announcement, which always but always has capital letters when running through my head, much like The World Wars, or The Plague. My parents are intent on sailing on through and breaking the road up in good time, but I realise that since The Announcement, since before that, in fact, my existence has been a blur of night and day and fear and worry, and I have a sudden, undeniable need to know what the day and date I am living in is.  
  
The odd couple are pretty lenient and pull over. It would appear that after the drunken escapades of Salt Lake, the parental guilt has increased threefold; my guess is that the social services thing has occurred to them too. Aunt Nina screeches her battered Toyota to a halt a little behind and, after a look from my mom, nudges Uncle Denny awake in the passenger seat.  
  
We hit this almost deserted shopping mall, where I find a morning broadsheet and exhale in relief. It is Sunday, which makes it ten days since my mother and I first blew into Bakersfield. More than I thought.  
  
I'm still chewing the latest news items like pieces of Normal Pie, when I catch up with my dad and Uncle Denny at an ice cream stand. They're talking about baseball, well; shouting about Baseball would be more accurate, yet I enjoy the hum of their voices and the familiarity of the topic as I slurp on the cone my dad hands me. My dad's a Cubs fan like my grandpa and great grandpa, my grandma says she can't figure out how I became such an ardent Mariner, try Seattle born and raised, grandma. Thinking of my grandma makes me wonder if I could get a spare second to dash off to a phone booth, place a call to Missouri, and explain the thing to her so she can understand. Then I remember she's deaf in one ear, refuses to miss even one night of bingo and most likely can't do anything to help me anyway.  
  
My ice cream begins to take up most of my concentration, so I swing myself around awkwardly to find somewhere to dump the paper that has fulfilled its purpose of reminding me the world is still functioning outside my disaster area. My dad, still highly engrossed in a soliloquy listing the reasons why the Cubs will forever dominate the majors, broke off when he saw me flailing.  
  
For a lifetime he just stared, and it took me a minute to realise it was the back of the paper that had caught his attention. I folded it toward myself to see, but my dad leapt forward and swept it to him with such force that I had to balance myself afterwards. His eyes scanned the print frantically and his forehead notched itself into deep creases. I manoeuvred to read over his shoulder, but uncle Denny held me back with a hand, I looked at him and opened my mouth to protest but my mom and Nina interrupted, strolling in arm in arm.  
  
Apparently finished reading, my dad, eyes still on the paper but unmoving, began to speak in a way that sounded as though his mouth was swimming in dry hay.  
  
"Lisa, you should.. have a look at this."  
  
My mom, suspiciously un-uptight, smiled at him.  
  
"Don't tell me, the Cubs lost again."  
  
My dad raised his eyes from the page and cut off her good mood at the root.  
  
After a frantic scan of the mysterious article, the adults moved off slightly and began to talk in hurried whispers. Even straining my hearing as best I could, they were inaudible. It had only just occurred to me that I could slip off and buy another paper when the war council broke up.  
  
"Come on, Reagan, we better get a move on."  
  
Alternate bursts of rage and disbelief ripped through my head- there was no way they could act like nothing had just happened. No. Way.  
  
"Yeah, sure, we can go.. as soon as you tell me what that was all about. Seriously."  
  
My mother reached out a hand to touch upon my shoulder, but I twisted myself away from her grasp- human contact had become somewhat foreign and unwanted to me of late. An alien concept, if you will.  
  
"No- no! Don't try to pat my arm and tell me it'll be okay! Don't do that- stop doing that! I just can't.I just.."  
  
Whatever I was planning to say, that is if I had planned what was coming out- my memory is a little hazy about it- was drowned out by the sound of my own sobs. My breath began to come out in those short rasps and my head grew dizzy- a feeling matched by disgust at my own, newly discovered, weak emotional capacity.  
  
The two women looked on in sympathy, but to my relief, not one made a gesture that bordered on reassurance. My dad and Denny had their hands stuffed deep into their pockets and made a forced effort to look every which way other than at me.  
  
Trying my dandiest to collect the itty-bitty pieces of my sanity that were now strewn across the beige floor tiles, I fled to the bathroom. When I had composed myself- a condition that came about only after five minutes of chanting "I'm me- I'm fine" at my mirrored reflection, and verified that no one had followed me- I slipped out again.  
  
Suffering from an acute sense of pride at my undercover skills and a larger, more bloated sense of repulsion at what I had been reduced to- I somehow manoeuvred myself to that same newsstand and bought another paper. At suspicious glances from the disgruntled Texan behind the counter I managed to rip out the page that began the controversy and ditched the thick excess.  
  
When I finally had the courage to ease the folded sheet from the back pocket of my jeans, we were a halfaways from El Paso, our destination. I was stretched out as much as was possible in the back of Aunt Nina's rust machine of a car- that wasn't really stretching at all- and curled up with my head facing the musty seat cushions.  
  
It took a bit of straining, yet Aunt Denny was too immersed in a local rock station and Aunt Nina a little too asleep to notice. Worried that it mightn't stay like that, my eyes raced across the smudged print and accompanying photos trying to locate. well, I had no idea, anything that might seem catastrophic enough to conceal from a much beloved family member.  
  
It didn't take as long to find as I imagined it would. Considering one side of the page was covered in cinema listings and times and the other nearly engulfed by an editorial on school meals, it was a bit of a no-brainer. After reading the small rectangle of print twice, slowly and staring at the blurred caption until my pupils burned in protest, I folded the parchment carefully and placed it once more in the safety of my faded Levis.  
  
I closed my eyes, because it tempered the stinging sensation a little, and because they had been open for what could only be described as much, much too long.  
  
I didn't sleep.  
  
My body bounced softly along with the Toyota's tires as they cut a path through the dirt roads and disappeared in and out of potholes. My ears throbbed gently from the effect of Kurt Cobain and Uncle Denny's tuneless imitation of him. My head whirred and thrummed with the questions taking part in a procession across my frontal lobe- at the head of which, twirling a baton and blinding onlookers in a harsh, vivid display of colour- what in under God do my parents have to fear from a woman released under false manslaughter charges in Maine? Closely followed by an equally distracting- who in the hell is Mary Crawford? 


End file.
